This is my farewell to Slashdot. I once stated after seeing my submissions disappear faster than spam -- often while RED and bearing no negative tags -- that I'd leave Slashdot out of self-respect if it happened again. Although I made an exception or two afterwards, the time has now come. I do not waste my time to have even the effort of a summary squandered so aggressively whilst spam outlives my contributions. The title of this journal is due to the tendency for this to occur under the watch of Soulskill -- almost exclusively. Whether or not it has anything to do with any particular editor or not, I obviously cannot say with certainty. It has simply reached a point where I've come to expect it -- an unhealthy anticipation. Hopefully some of the 18 accepted submissions have helped to enrich things rather than otherwise; I definitely tried. As a final note to actual "friends"; my failure to reciprocate was Discordian in nature, and I was inclined only to friend my foes. For us Discordians must stick apart. Take care folks and keep the the excellent stories coming!

1. A collusive process whereby otherwise public information is made proprietary, assimilated and either (a) retained, or (b) reconstituted by the few for purposes of affecting the many

2. The art of making something seem more intelligent by obscuring the details necessary for thorough evaluation (See: esoterica)

3. A primary ingredient in propaganda

4. A private precursor to public ignorance

5. An expendable and valuable resource thought by oligarchs to produce results at a significantly-faster rate than wisdom, but with greater consequences and less predictable results on long-term scales

6. An industrialized, highly refined form of data-processing specially tailored for those deficient of intellect.

No official change-log has yet to emerge for the Linux version of Skype 4.1, but the closed-source VoIP program now has the ability to sign into Microsoft accounts and also chat with Microsoft Windows Live users.

Skype 4.1 for Windows was originally released in 2009 and is now up to version Skype 6.0. The OS X version of Skype was also updated to 6.0 last month with Microsoft and Facebook account integration.

Although a story on the subject of succession was posted on Slashdot yesterday, Ars Technica has one just out, which provides some additional insight and updates on the situation. 90,000 people is a pretty good start, considering it's a pretty new petition. Guess that's what the drones were for -- our leaders really look ahead!

I figured I'd submit this one last time (in journal) since the last two seem to have been rejected. I was quite intrigued by this device, especially since it appears to resolve some previously debated concerns regarding the openness of the Raspberry Pi. This final submission (via journal) is primarily in hopes of either receiving a comment (or two) as to why it is unworthy, or perhaps alternatively, some nods this time around. I was genuinely pleased to discover it, hence the persistence.

First, this first paragraph is not the submission. I am re-submitting the story below, but to journal this time. My reason for the second submission is exclusively because I observed the first one showing red consistently until it suddenly and rapidly disappeared altogether with no color change. It was still showing in the Firehose box to the left for a while, but not on the Firehose page (dubiously aka "Recent" page). I also observed a few other articles simultaneously disappear with far greater speed than I have ever noticed before; even spam lasts longer. I can imagine it being voted as offtopic, but I saw no added tags and it happened with peculiar speed. So there is my reason. See post below if desired:

"Shortly before midnight on October 15 â" initially surmised by some as a meteorite â" a large explosion occurred at a munitions facility near Camp Minden, Louisiana. Amongst those evacuated were hundreds of students and prisoners, though no fatalities have been reported. Doppler-images from the National Weather Service suggest the plume may have towered as high as 7,200 feet.

Apparently, large explosions are not uncommon in the Minden area. In 2006 an explosion resulted in over 1000 people being evacuated, and as recently as 2011 1000lbs of black powder exploded."

First, this is NOT a submission. I was not aware of any other way to ask an informal question, so I've posted to/journal.

After making several comments on Slashdot today, I later checked for replies directly on the article's front page and discovered one of my comments appearing out of context. An image of this thread here(1) , shows I had responded to an AC who had replied to one of my comments. The AC's comment is clearly visible and it can be viewed by its ID here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3146679&cid=41472221, where you will see my reply, stupid or not, but in context.

you can see that the threshold for displaying comments is set to Full, which still left the AC comment invisible while viewing its child-comment (my comment).

Image (1) was captured from within my user-account options, which automatically loads all comments for single threads. What I failed to realize is that to see all comments on the article page, I needed to click the Load All Comments option. See here(3). Yes, I know, eureka.

But without selecting the Load All Comments option, my comment is displayed without its parent, appearing as if I've responded to another user. Below is a [mis]representation of my comment as it would presumably appear to all other Slashdot users, regardless of their settings and whether logged in or not: See(4)

It is unlikely that most Slashdot users select the Load All Comments option -- apparently resulting in some comments appearing completely out of context, almost guaranteeing they will be moderated as "Troll" or "Offtopic". It seems unreasonable for a parent-comment to be invisible when viewing its child-comment simply because the parent is rated zero or below (- 1). As I believe is well-illustrated by the images linked herein, such a protocol can corrupt otherwise normal or higher-rated comments. Has it always been this way? Is this more sensible than I realize? Do I have a point? Is this the cost of replying to ACs? Or am I missing something?